Asador is a Spanish noun used to describe a professional who cooks with natural hardwood and fire; usually a fire on the ground. In North America, this type of person would be considered a ‘grillmaster’ or ‘pitmaster’, although they typically use charcoal or lump wood coal. The asador tool is the workhorse of the Asador and his ground fire. Most people will informally refer to it as a poker. It is the most misunderstood and unappreciated piece of equipment because there has never been a commercially designed tool as the present invention built for the Asador to use for his culinary ground fire. Most people believe that a poker has only one use: to “poke” at burning wood. Give the average person a poker and tell them to “man the fire” and they will poke at the fire all night. However, give it to an experienced Asador and you will be impressed as he employs it with skill and knowledge. Below are the six detailed uses of the Asador poker.
Use #1: The Creation of Airflow. The Asador needs a balance of oxygen, heat and fuel in order for his fire to burn to its fullest potential. This is where the asador tool proves its worth. As wood burns, it naturally “settles,” or collapses towards the base of the fire. When this happens, it is common for two or more pieces of wood to “fall” in parallel, basically side by side or on top of each other, thus minimizing oxygen flow to as much as 30% of its surface space. Moreover, when the wood settles and lays flat on top of the coals beneath it, the wood surface in contact with coals is starved of oxygen and drops in temperature. This is not as big a concern when using irregular-shaped wood that will not lay flat. However, it is a big deal when using split wood that has two to three flat sides. An Asador instinctively knows this and uses his poker to reposition the wood and create airflow so the wood is not laying in parallel contact with each other, nor directly on top of the coal base.
Use #2: The Initial Reorganization of the Fire. The initial shape of a cooking fire is not properly organized for cooking. When discussing the cooking fire, the “front side” of the fire is the closest to the actual food preparation area on the periphery of the fire, which is where some of the coals to support the cooking process will be harvested. The “back side” of the fire is on the opposite of the “front side” and is where additional wood is added for fuel. Using the present invention, the Asador can more efficiently physically separate the burning wood from the coals and establish the “front side” and the “back side” of a fire making the fire ready for cooking.
Use #3: Dislodging Glowing Embers. When fire consumes wood, its exterior, the surface exposed to the fire, eventually turns into embers that glow bright red while still attached to the surface of the wood. These attached embers essentially starve the fresh wood fuel that is beneath it, thus stagnating the fire. Sometimes, especially with smaller pieces of wood, these embers naturally release from the wood and fall into the fire. When this happens, fresh fuel in the form of wood is exposed to the fire and burns hot. Sometimes, embers that form on bigger pieces of wood need to be dislodged from the wood and the present invention is designed to do this.
Use #4: Promote the Even Burning of Wood. The most intense, hottest part of any fire is its center, which is sometimes referred to as the core. When wood is added to the fire, the pieces closest to the center are consumed faster than those along the peripheral of the fire. The asador tool should be ideally designed to reposition the wood around in order to promote even consumption.
Use #5: Make Way for New Wood. When a fire is built, it is only a matter of time before the original pieces of wood fuel are consumed and no longer produce heat. The Asador's job is to ensure the fire has a continuous supply of fuel by adding more wood. In most cases, he can lay wood on the fire without rearranging it. However, sometimes he has to move a couple pieces of wood around in order to make way for bigger pieces.
Use #6: Reposition Wood in Order to Safely Harvest Coals. The last use for the asador tool is to reposition the wood, so that using a shovel the Asador can harvest the coals. After reorganizing the fire, the Asador usually harvests the coals from the front side of the fire. However, when the front side's supply has been depleted, the Asador needs to move the wood around on the back side of the fire so that he can use the shovel to harvest more coal.
Most fire pokers generally fall into two categories: manufactured and improvised. Ironically, poker designs have changed very little over the last couple hundred years. They're basically heavy metal rods approximately 30-36 inches (76-92 centimeters) in length with blunt tips and a stubby hook off to one side. Over the years, numerous designs have been manufactured and/or improvised from existing designs with varying degrees of frustration. There are two issues with using the traditional poker design for the Asador's ground fire. First, most are designed for use in the indoor fireplace and are too short for the outdoor ground fire. As a result, they don't provide enough “stand off” from the intense heat of a mature ground fire, and you can get burned. The length is acceptable for a weak burning waist-level live-fire, but is insufficient for many applications. Second, the traditional design does not safely satisfy the above six requirements, specifically when it comes to moving wood around. Even the fireman's pike is inadequate. It's a longer version of a poker [usually 6 feet (1.8 meters)] designed to check the structural integrity of a roof to a burning house before a fireman walks on it. Although its length makes it more desirable than a traditional fireplace poker, its unwieldy size makes it inefficient for the Asador's use. The second category, the improvised poker, is exactly as it sounds, anything that can be used to poke at the fire. This can be a stick, a metal pipe or a garden hoe. Obviously, an improvised poker is better than using your hands but, like the traditional design, it's at best an undesirable substitute. The present invention satisfies the above six requirements and provides a device ideally suited for the Asador.
A fire poker (also known as a “stoker”) is a short, rigid rod, preferably of fireproof material, used to adjust coals and/or wood fuel, burning in a fireplace or a fire pit. It is often metallic and sometimes has a point at one end for pushing burning materials (or a hook for pulling/raking, or a combination thereof) and a poker handle at the opposite end. An example of a fire poker as found in the prior art can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 7,131,675 This fire poker has a hook portion attached at one end of a shaft, with a handle at the opposing end. This poker has a straight segment that extends past the hook portion by about one inch, this distance is not significant enough to allow for the straight segment to be utilized for stoking a fire without having the hook portion interfere with the process and the hook will not provide for delicate displacement of material (e.g. logs) used to fuel the fire often allowing the wood to slip or turn on the hook. U.S. Pat. No. 8,162,361 illustrates a fireplace poker that has an elongate shaft with a hook member disposed near the very end of the shaft. At the opposing end, there is a loop member. The shaft has a bend located between the loop hand grip and the pointed end of the shaft. The hook member may provide less efficiency when manipulating the delicate displacement of material (e.g. logs) used to fuel the fire. Materials may easily spin and slip off the hook. Additionally, the loop shaped hand grip and the bend in the shaft may make the positioning of materials difficult in the direction of the pointed end of the poker. U.S. Design Pat. No. 267,999 illustrates a fire poker that has an elongate shaft. One end of the shaft has what appears to be a wooden handle attached thereto. The opposing end of the shaft is curled around to form a hook member. At the same end of the shaft, but on the side opposing the hook member, another hook member extends from the shaft in a direction opposing the first hook member. U.S. Design Pat. No. 248,209 shows poker having an elongate shaft with a wooden grip one end and a single hooking and pushing member on the opposing end. Materials being pushed or pulled can spin and slide off of the pokers in U.S. Design Pat. Nos. 267,999 and 248,209. This makes it difficult to place materials on the fire. Additionally, none of the prior art patents provide a means to scrape the burning material surface to expose new fuel to the fire or do the prior art patents provide an effective means to push and pull the materials, such as logs, reducing the likelihood that the log or other material will turn and slip before the material's desired position in the fire is obtained. Finally, none of the prior art patents provide a means to physically “spear” and penetrate the wood so that the heaviest of logs can be safely picked up and strategically placed on any part of the fire in a controlled manner, instead the prior art patents appear to rely on instruments having a more “blunted” end to probe the fire. The prior art patents are for designs that solely manipulate a fire of an indoor fireplace, and they are not for devices that are very useful to the Asador as he manipulates an outdoor ground fire.